Evasion and hedging in the language of parliamentary Question Time

The paper examines evasion and hedging in the language of parliamentary Question Time in the British House of Commons and in the Australian House of Representatives. It analyses the usage of evasion and hedging, and briefly investigates the relation between these two linguistic phenomena. Moreover, it seeks to test the methodological approach, and the conclusions reached in the previous research, especially by Alan Partington (2003) and Bruce Fraser (2010), and to provide a comparative perspective on the rhetorical culture and communication conventions in the British and Australian Question Time.